


Gifts of Sphinx's Riddle

by Abby_Ebon



Series: Bite Sized Bits of Fic [78]
Category: Greek and Roman Mythology, Oedipus Cycle - Sophocles
Genre: Baby Names, F/M, Mother-Son Relationship, No Smut, Parent/Child Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-20
Updated: 2016-01-20
Packaged: 2018-05-15 04:08:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 662
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5770696
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Abby_Ebon/pseuds/Abby_Ebon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Greek Myth, Oedipus/Jocasta, he knows she's given birth before, but out of respect for her grief for her first husband and the child he never spoke to her about it. Now his daughter is on the way and he is terrified of what Jocasta must face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gifts of Sphinx's Riddle

Oedipus tries to keep his fears from Jocasta as she grows heavier and quieter every day. She is truthfully older than he is and while he has never regretted accepting her proposal of marriage and kingship of Thebes over which he was savior of. He has never been married as she has, he has never loved another as she has, and he had no sisters to have yet made him an uncle. Calling upon his mother in Corinth would be to tempt that awful oracle; he dare not ever risk his mother or father.

Oedipus stands leaning against the wall outside the chambers he shares with his wife, not knowing if he is going to her or away. Jocasta had told him to go distract himself, with hunting or wandering or the people's problems. Yet he felt like a fidgeting horse with her holding his reigns, he dared not go far for fear that he'd be lost when she might need him.

It's something most pretend not to see, yet Jocasta's brother sees. Creon, once regent king of Thebes, does not keep his silence as others and Oedipus might in his place.

"It is lucky within my family to name the babe before it is born." Creon's eyes are full of sympathy and Oedipus takes no offense, instead he laughs nervously.

"Dare I? What if it's a girl and I give a boy's name?" Creon smiles thoughtfully, but when he gestures for Oedipus it is no answer. Oedipus finds his feet following Creon and where he leads is to the court where blind old Tiresias sits between pillars on a step nearer the fires. His daughters are never far and all three of them had been born with the gift of prophesy.

"Tiresias, if you will an answer for the solver of Sphinx's riddle. Tell me if I shall have niece or nephew?" Tiresias smiles in a way that makes Oedipus uneasy, it is sickening, pained, but perhaps it's to do with what they say, that Tiresias had been a woman once. That he had birthed his three daughters by his female body. Of any other father or mother, none dared say.

"Jocasta will be relieved by Hera's daughter Eileithyia four times." Tiresias's daughter Historis meets Oedipus eye to eye, something her father fails to do. It was said she'd helped to deliver the mother of Heracles of her labor pains, pretending Alcmena had birthed her twins and the spells of witches had failed. Outsiders claimed the trick had been done by Galinthias against Eileithyia herself.

"Two sons and two daughters, shall spring from the seed of Thebes’s rightful king." Daphne adds her eyes upon the smoke that rises from the fire.

"Your daughter shall be born before Helios finds his rest this day." Manto glances skyward as if to judge when more readily. If she knows the very hour, Oedipus would rather she not say.

"Ah! A niece, you see Oedipus?" Creon declares with a note of triumph that hints at his previous unspoken impatience. Oedipus finds he is indeed relieved, it won't be another son to remind Jocasta of the loss of her first husband and child. He wonders too if it's easier for a woman to birth a daughter rather than a son, or perhaps that's a father's mere hopeful folly.

"Call her Antigone." Tiresias suggests, as if knowing that had been Creon's cause from the start, which he perhaps does.

Oedipus hears Jocasta cry out and he, although never fast on his scarred feet, is the first to be at Jocasta's side. He refuses to leave her and tells her the gods would surely not mind, for Hephaestus had been midwife upon Athena's birth and Hermes had been midwife to Aphrodite upon the birth of Beroe.

If Jocasta believes his reassurances or has misgivings, Oedipus stays at her side until Antigone joins her cries with her mother's and Oedipus is reminded of Sphinx's riddle which gifted him this.


End file.
